This, everyone, is the life they’ve chosen. Job to job, city to city, boss to boss. The uncertainty of it all year after year, season after season, contract after contract.

In those previous 17 seasons, Gonzales has made seven moves, lived in seven different communities, made seven sets of new friends, and worked with so many different coaches that their one true bond is the job they share and the goal they chase.

Only this time, with the move to Champaign, Ill. from Baton Rouge, La., something was different. In the three years Gonzales worked for Les Miles as wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator, in the three years his kids grew up on the Bayou, something changed.

For the first time in 18 years, he and his family feel like they’ve left home. Maybe that’s why his 8-year-old son, Cole, was on the floor last week, amid the pile of boxes, upset while working through spelling homework. Or why Gonzales, beginning the biggest move of his coaching career, wasn’t thinking about himself—but more about the overshadowed factor through the last 17 years.

His wife, Julie.

“I’m just so incredibly fortunate to have her on this journey with me,” Gonzales said. “If you don’t have a supportive wife, a supportive partner to stick with you through the ups and downs, it can’t be done. It’s not an easy life.”

So while Gonzales gets his first shot at running an offense and calling plays for the Illini; while there couldn’t possibly be more pressure on him to perform unless he were a head coach; Julie continues to do the hardest job in the house.

Packing and unpacking. Turning off the utilities and turning on the utilities. Guiding two children through the pitfalls of moving (again) and making new friends (again) and finding a new school (again).

Is the phone connected? Do we have cable? Did the 401k transfer?

For the first three days, the Gonzales family didn’t have hot water in their new home. And those boxes weren’t getting unpacked by themselves.

All workable, fixable problems—but not something that can consume Billy Gonzales when he’s developing an offense, learning personalities of other assistant coaches he’ll work with—and more than anything, preparing for his new head coach.

The exact same thoughts used to roll through McElwain’s head. Four years ago, he arrived in Tuscaloosa to coach the Crimson Tide offense.

Needless to say, Nick Saban’s top concern isn’t hot water in the family home.

“When I accepted (the Colorado State) job, the first feeling of joy I felt was for Karen—not me,” McElwain said of his wife. “It’s so hard to move place to place. To change jobs, to break friendships and relationships, to uproot your family. She never complains. And here we are as coaches complaining at the drop of a hat about this or that.”

Think about that and consider this offseason was one of the most volatile in decades. Not only at the head coaching level, but with assistant coaches turnover.

More and more, assistant coaches are bearing the brunt of poor decisions by head coaches, and also moving around to collect bigger pay and responsibility after successful seasons. Either way, that’s a lot of boxes stacked to a lot of ceilings.